Related papers: Circumbinary Habitability Niches
Context. Binary systems can be born surrounded by circumbinary discs. The gaseous discs surrounding either of the two stellar companions can have their life extended by the supply of mass arriving from the circumbinary disc. Aims. The…
Abundance anomalies observed in globular cluster stars indicate pollution with material processed by hydrogen burning. Two main sources have been suggested: asymptotic giant branch stars and massive stars rotating near the break-up limit.…
It is currently unknown how common life is on exoplanets, or how long planets can remain viable for life. To date, we have a superficial notion of habitability, a necessary first step, but so far lacking an understanding of the detailed…
Many astrophysical environments, from star clusters and globular clusters to the disks of Active Galactic Nuclei, are characterized by frequent interactions between stars and the compact objects that they leave behind. Here, using a suite…
Planetary Nebulae represent a powerful window into the evolution of low-intermediate mass stars that have undergone extensive mass-loss. The nebula manifests itself in an extremely wide variety of shapes, but exactly how the mass lost is…
Conceptualizing planetary habitability depends on understanding how living organisms originated and what features of environments are essential to foster abiogenesis. Estimates of the abundance of life's building blocks are confounded by…
Galaxies with stellar bulges are generically observed to host supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The hierarchical merging of galaxies should therefore lead to the formation of SMBH binaries. Merging of old massive galaxies with little gas…
In the past 15 years, astronomers have revealed that a significant fraction of the stars should harbor planets and that it is likely that terrestrial planets are abundant in our galaxy. Among these planets, how many are habitable, i.e.…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary systems are unavoidable outcomes of galaxy mergers. Their dynamics encode information about their formation and growth, the composition of their host galactic nuclei, the evolution of galaxies, and the…
Serving as the progenitors of electromagnetic and gravitational wave transients, massive stars have received renewed interest in recent years. However, many aspects of their birth and evolution remain opaque, particularly in the context of…
Binary evolution is influenced by dynamical scattering with other stars in dense environments. Heggie's law states that, due to their environments, hard binaries (whose orbital energy surpasses the typical energy of single stars) tend to…
The habitable fraction of a planet's surface is important for the detectability of surface biosignatures. The extent and distribution of habitable areas is influenced by external parameters that control the planet's climate, atmospheric…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are expected by the hierarchical galaxy formation model in $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. There is some evidence in the literature for SMBHBs in AGNs, but there are few observational constraints on the…
I present models of disk evolution around young binary stars. I show that the primary factor in determining circumbinary disk lifetimes is the rate of disk photoevaporation. I also find that photoevaporative clearing leaves a signature on…
Tides raised on a planet by its host star's gravity can reduce a planet's orbital semi-major axis and eccentricity. This effect is only relevant for planets orbiting very close to their host stars. The habitable zones of low-mass stars are…
We have developed a comprehensive methodology for calculating the circumbinary HZ in planet-hosting P-type binary star systems. We present a general formalism for determining the contribution of each star of the binary to the total flux…
Binary systems anchor many of the fundamental relations relied upon in asteroseismology. Masses and radii are rarely constrained better than when measured via orbital dynamics and eclipse depths. Pulsating binaries have much to offer. They…
The environment near super massive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei contain a large number of stars and compact objects. A fraction of these are likely to be members of binaries. Here we discuss the binary population of stellar black…
Binary stars are thought to be a controlling factor in globular cluster evolution, since they can heat the environmental stars by converting their binding energy to kinetic energy during dynamical interactions. Through such interaction, the…
Compact objects observed via gravitational waves are classified as black holes or neutron stars primarily based on their inferred mass with respect to stellar evolution expectations. However, astrophysical expectations for the lowest mass…